


Nu kyr'adyc, shi taab'echaaj'la

by cliniclyInsane189



Series: Whumptober 2020 [18]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mandalorian Culture, Post-Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Whump, just a bit?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27111949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cliniclyInsane189/pseuds/cliniclyInsane189
Summary: Aerin has lost too many people. Four years after Order 66, they take some time to remember them.
Series: Whumptober 2020 [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947934
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Nu kyr'adyc, shi taab'echaaj'la

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Whumptober Day 19 - ‘Broken Hearts’ - **Grief | Mourning Loved One | Survivor’s Guilt**  
>  The title is Mando'a: "Nu kyr'adyc, shi taab'echaaj'la" - "Not gone, merely marching far away"—; Mandalorian phrase for the departed.  
> Once again, my OC has Feelings and A Bad Time.

Empire Day is always hard, but it’s particularly bad this year.

Because Aerin and Ieroah are on Utapau for Empire Day this year. Because Utapau is where thousands of Aerin’s brothers left for just over four years ago. And, so far, none of them have come back, not really. All those once-bright presences in the Force - each distinct and individual - turned uniformly blank and grey and static, stolen from them by the Sith just as surely as their brethren in the Order were. Though at least for _them_ there’s a chance for return. One day.

Aerin sits alone at the edge of a sinkhole in the dead of night, looks up at the unfamiliar sky and thanks the Force that they weren’t naturally gifted with psychometry.

They close their eyes and lie back, the thoughts of the one Master they almost lost _here_ bringing them back to the one they _did_ lose, all those parsecs away on Geonosis. The thought, as always, brings a swell of emotion - a bittersweet cocktail of sadness and grief and warm nostalgia.

Grief, it seems, is to be the focus of the night. On such a day as this, where people across the galaxy were celebrating the rise of the Empire and the murder of Aerin’s people, the destruction of their brothers, the end of a war and yet the death of peace. It is fitting, they suppose.

They let out a quiet sigh, unwilling to bring attention to themselves and end their almost comfortable solitude, and open their eyes again, staring unseeing at the night sky.

They are a long way from the Core, here. Surely it would be safe to let down their guard - just for a moment, just for long enough to let all their pent up grief and anger (and self-loathing) out into the Force. Just for long enough to grieve properly - something they’d not given themselves chance to do when Master Itou had died, something that had been taken from them along with everything else on the day the Temple had burned.

There was still a part of them that didn’t believe they had really survived that day - and maybe who they had been, hadn’t. There was another part still, one that Aerin ruthlessly shoved down and away (for Ieroah’s sake, of course), that believed they shouldn’t have. That they should have fallen along with the rest of their family, or trying to make it off of Coruscant, or, or, or…

They close their eyes once more, carefully shield their end of the Bond they share with their Padawan. And then they let it out - every grief-stricken, anger-sharpened, fear-warped memory and thought from the past four years, _seven years_ , comes pouring out, too fast to carefully examine and discard, too fast for them to be mindful with them. And with them come the tears, at last, streaming from tightly shut eyes, harsh breathing stifled by a hand across their mouth.

_It wasn’t fair! Why did it have to be them, why couldn’t they have died in the Temple,_ **_on Geonosis_ ** _, why did their loved ones always have to_ **_die?!_ **

They don’t acknowledge how long the flood lasts, but when it finally comes to an end they feel hollowed out and empty - just as they had in the first few days after waking up after Geonosis.

The grief will come back, they know, in swells and waves as if pulled by some external force, by the reminders of those Aerin has lost.

They have lost too many, but they know every name.

They _remember_ every name.

_Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum._

**Author's Note:**

> Mando'a: _"Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum"_ \- "I'm still alive, but you are dead. I remember you, so you are eternal"—Daily remembrance of those passed on, followed by the names of those being remembered.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


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